After breaking up with my boyfriend, I made a fortune and rose rapidly in my career.

The note was held between my fingertips, the eight characters burning hot.

Chen Ping didn't stand up. The motion-activated lights in the hallway were off, and the green emergency exit indicator light flickered, cutting the line of penmanship into fragments.

"Don't check your father's funeral guest list."

The more something is forbidden to be investigated, the more it must be investigated.

He folded the note, slipped it into his suit pocket, and took out his keys to open the door. He went inside without turning on the lights, heading straight to the study and pulling open the bottom drawer. Inside was a brown paper envelope, sealed with wax, the wax now yellowed and cracked. There were no words on the envelope, but he remembered where it came from.

Three months before her death, her mother dug this envelope out of the bottom of an old box and handed it to him.

"When your father passed away, the names of all the people who came were listed here. I had the funeral home staff copy them down."

Chen Ping broke the wax seal and pulled out two yellowed sheets of paper. The names were written in blue ballpoint pen, the handwriting crooked and messy, the handwriting of a funeral home staff member. There were forty-seven names in total, arranged in three columns, with each name followed by a note indicating its relationship to the deceased.

Colleagues. Friends. Students. Relatives. Neighbors.

His index finger traced the list line by line. He recognized most of the first thirty names or had heard his mother mention them. They were former colleagues from the Provincial Party Committee Office, his father's classmates from Party School, and several old neighbors.

The finger stopped at the thirty-fourth name.

"Song Baiqing - student."

student?

My father, Chen Jianbang, was an official in the provincial party committee office, not a teacher. He had never supervised graduate students or held any part-time positions at any school. When did he start having "students"?

Chen Ping ran the name through his mind three times. Song Baiqing. He had absolutely no recollection of him. His mother had never mentioned him, and he hadn't seen him in his father's contact list before his death.

He picked up his phone, took a picture of the list, and then folded the letter back into the envelope.

1:12 AM.

He can't use his official position to investigate. The note slipped under the door indicates someone is watching his every move. Going through the provincial government's system to access his files would leave too obvious a trace.

He pulled out his phone's contacts and found a number he had saved but never dialed in a long time.

Liu Sufeng, the director of the Qingxi County Archives, was my mother's former colleague. She was rehired by the county archives after retiring from the High School Affiliated to the Normal University. She would send a box of tea to Jizhou during holidays, and Chen Pingfang would always send her a box of fruit in return.

It was too late, so he didn't make a phone call but sent a text message instead.

"Aunt Liu, I'd like to go back to Qingxi to see some of my father's old files. Is tomorrow convenient? As a family member, I don't want to go through official channels."

Send it out, then place the phone face down on the table.

He had only slept for less than four hours when his phone vibrated and woke him up. Liu Sufeng replied with just two words: "Come on."

At seven o'clock in the morning, Chen Ping changed into a dark gray cotton coat, without a tie or briefcase, only carrying his wallet and mobile phone, and drove his old car out of the city.

Qingxi County is located 140 kilometers southwest of Jizhou, along a provincial highway. In winter, the fields are gray and the poplar trees along the roadside are bare.

At 9:10, the car stopped in front of the Qingxi County Archives.

He had been to this three-story building twice before, the last time being five years ago when he came to cancel his household registration after his mother passed away. Several patches of the beige paint on the exterior wall had peeled off, and a stray cat was perched on the nose of one of the stone lions at the entrance.

Liu Sufeng was waiting in the lobby on the first floor. She was in her early sixties, with gray hair, wearing reading glasses and a dark red scarf.

"Lie flat, and you've lost weight."

"Aunt Liu, thank you for your trouble."

Liu Sufeng waved her hand and led him to the archives room on the second floor.

"Your father's personnel file, the part about his organizational affiliation was transferred to the provincial level a long time ago. But his household registration file and social relationship record are still in the county. Which part do you want to see?"

"Social relationship record. Twenty-three years ago."

Liu Sufeng pushed open the door to the archives room. Inside were rows of metal cabinets, and the air was thick with the musty smell of old paper. She rummaged through them for seven or eight minutes, then pulled out a file box from the bottom of the third row of cabinets and blew off the dust.

"Chen Jianbang's social relations record from 1978 to 2001. See for yourself, I'm out here."

Liu Sufeng went out and closed the door behind her.

Chen Ping opened the file box, inside which was a stack of bound forms, arranged by year. He flipped directly to 2001, the year his father passed away.

The social relations record form listed my father's main social contacts from that year. Colleagues, friends, and relatives were listed one by one, with each person's workplace and contact information noted next to them.

He scanned the rows with his finger.

Song Baiqing is not included.

This person does not exist in my father's official social records.

But the funeral guest list clearly stated: Song Baiqing, student. Someone who wasn't part of his father's social network appeared at the funeral and even claimed to be his father's student.

Chen Ping closed the file box, took out his phone, and sent Han Zhiming an encrypted message.

"Investigate someone. Song Baiqing. Don't go through the provincial government system; use your personal connections to check his household registration with the Public Security Bureau. Do it as soon as possible."

Han Zhiming replied quickly: "Received. It will probably take about two hours."

Chen Ping put the file box back in its original place and walked out of the archives.

Liu Sufeng was sitting on a bench in the corridor knitting when she looked up at him.

"Found it?"

"We found part of it. Aunt Liu, in the years after my father passed away, did anyone come to the county to check his records?"

Liu Sufen paused for a moment while knitting.

"have."

Chen Ping's feet were rooted to the spot.

"The year after your father passed away, a man came with a letter of introduction from the Provincial Party Committee's Organization Department, saying he was routinely organizing cadre files. That man borrowed your father's file for three days. When he returned it, I looked through it and found that a few pages were missing."

Which pages are missing?

"I don't remember very clearly~ It seems to be a business trip record from 98 to 99."

98 to 99.

Chen Ping felt a chill run down his spine. Those two years were precisely the period when Ren Shaoting was laying the groundwork for his expansion in Suzhou. His father was then in charge of overall coordination in the Provincial Party Committee Office and had handled a large number of internal documents.

After his father died, someone went to Qingxi County and used a letter of introduction from the Organization Department to remove his business trip records from key years.

It's not about destroying, it's about removing it. We'll keep a copy; we can use it against them anytime.

He stood in the corridor, his mind suddenly contorted with a jumble of thoughts: the note slipped under the door, Wei Liangjun's precise knowledge of his mother's name, the stolen business trip records, and the "student" who appeared at the funeral.

Someone has been watching the Chen family for 23 years.

It wasn't his father he was staring at; it was him.

My phone vibrated. It wasn't Han Zhiming; it was an unknown number sending a string of numbers.

「7~22~18~4~15~9~31~26。」

There was no signature, no text, only this string of numbers.

Chen Ping stared at the screen for five seconds.

This is the code format Gao Ran used. The numbers correspond to the page numbers and line numbers of a certain book. The two agreed on a simple encrypted communication method in the early stages of the Corefire project. The key was the third edition of "Digital Signal Processing" on Gao Ran's office bookshelf.

Gao Ran sent out a second secret report from prison.

Chen Ping walked down the stairs, got into the car, and took out the electronic version of the book from the glove compartment. He matched the numbers one by one and deciphered a sentence.

"Shadow funds flowed into Songhe's account."

Pine and Crane.

It is not the name of an organization or a company; it is the name of an individual account.

Chen Ping's finger hovered above the screen. Just then, Han Zhiming's message popped up.

"Song Baiqing, male, born in 1965, registered residence in Qingxi County. His household registration was cancelled in 2003 due to death. The death certificate was issued by Qingxi County People's Hospital."

He is already dead.

Chen Ping placed his phone on the steering wheel, staring at the second message Han Zhiming sent immediately afterward.

"In addition, Song Baiqing has an unclosed bank account, opened at Qingxi County Rural Commercial Bank, Chengguan Branch. Account name: Songhe."

Outside the windshield, the old streets of Qingxi County were shrouded in a gray haze under the winter sun. The stray cat at the entrance of the archives jumped off the stone lion and disappeared around the corner of the alley.

Chen Ping's car was parked less than 800 meters away from the Chengguan branch.